The Council of Chalcedon in 451 divided eastern Christianity, with those who were later called Syrian Orthodox among the Christians in the near eastern provinces who refused to accept the decisions of the council. These non-Chalcedonians (still better known under the misleading term Monophysites) separated from the church of the empire after Justin I attempted to enforce Chalcedon in the East in 518. Volker L. Menze historicizes the formation of the Syrian Orthodox Church in the first half of the sixth century. This volume covers the period from the accession of Justin to the second Council of Constantinople in 553. Menze begins with an exploration of imperial and papal policy from a non-Chalcedonian, eastern perspective, then discusses monks, monasteries and the complex issues surrounding non-Chalcedonian church life and sacraments. The volume concludes with a close look at the working of "collective memory" among the non-Chalcedonians and the construction of a Syrian Orthodox identity. This study is a histoire evenementielle of actual religious practice, especially concerning the Eucharist and the diptychs, and of ecclesiastical and imperial policy which modifies the traditional view of how emperors (and in the case of Theodora: empresses) ruled the late Roman/early Byzantine empire. By combining this detailed analysis of secular and ecclesiastical politics with a study of long-term strategies of memorialization, the book also focuses on deep structures of collective memory on which the tradition of the present Syrian Orthodox Church is founded.

In this pioneering study, the first of its kind, Galit Noga-Banai analyses silver reliquaries decorated with Christian figurative themes. She offers a clearer and more detailed picture of the beginnings of the cult of relics, which were an essential asset to the Church in its establishment of pilgrimage centres and local hagiographic heritage sites, first in Italy and later in other places around Europe and North Africa. At the same time, Noga-Banai highlights the identity of the objects as portable art, treating the reliquaries as visual historical testimonies. The book is illustrated with nearly 100 finely reproduced drawings and photographs.

"Judas" is synonymous with "traitor." But a newly discovered ancient text of the Gospel of Judas offers a picture of Judas Iscariot radically different from the Church's traditional understanding of him, and maintains that far from being the infamous betrayer, Judas was actually Jesus's trusted friend and the recipient of secret revelation. Simon Gathercole's new book includes a translation of the ancient Egyptian text of the Gospel of Judas and a running commentary, and offers new translations of all the ancient evidence about Judas Iscariot and the Gospel attributed to him. It gets behind the hype which the Gospel of Judas has attracted, and looks at why the group which produced the work were in such bitter conflict with the mainstream Christian church, and shows how the document provides us with a window into the turbulent world of Christianity and Gnosticism in the century after Jesus.

This book examines ideas of spiritual nourishment as maintained chiefly by Patristic theologians -those who lived in Byzantium. It shows how a particular type of Byzantine frescoes and icons illustrated the views of Patristic thinkers on the connections between the heavenly and the earthly worlds. The author explores the occurrence, and geographical distribution, of this new type of iconography that manifested itself in representations concerned with the human body, and argues that these were a reaction to docetist ideas. The volume also investigates the diffusion of saints' cults and demonstrates that this took place on a North-South axis as their veneration began in Byzantium and gradually reached the northern part of Europe, and eventually the entirety of Christendom.

Latin Epics of the New Testament is about the growth of Christianity, and in particular the challenge of engaging with the Roman intellectual elite and its highly sophisticated Graeco-Roman tradition. In this culture epics like those of Vergil and Lucan were highly valued for their language, their "heroic" themes, and their Rome-centered ideologies. Roger Green examines each of these epics in detail, showing how the three authors Juvencus, Sedulius, and Arator repackage the New Testament as epic, and try to make a bridge between two very different cultures. He explores the fascinating questions of how these authors exploit epic themes such as gods, heroes, war, and fate, without playing down the very real theological concerns of their times. All these poets were popular in the Middle Ages and later, and are the pioneers of poetry that leads to Renaissance epic and the famous poems of John Milton.

The two-volume work The New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers offers a comparative study of two collections of early Christian texts: the New Testament; and the texts, from immediately after the New Testament period, which are conventionally referred to as the Apostolic Fathers.
The first volume, The Reception of the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers, presents a comprehensive and rigorous discussion of the extent to which the writings later included in the New Testament were known to and used by each of the Apostolic Fathers. Contemporary research on the textual traditions of both collections is used to address the questions of textual transmission and reception.
The second volume, Trajectories through the New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers, discusses broad theological, literary, and historical issues that arise in the comparative study of these texts, and which are of importance to the study of early Christianity. It deals with the most important current debates concerning both the Apostolic Fathers and the New Testament, such as baptism, Pauline theology, the function of apocalyptic elements, Church order, and Jewish and Christian identity.

Christian exegesis of the Song of Songs has long interacted creatively with - and, more recently, reacted critically against - the allegorical interpretation developed by Origen of Alexandria (c.185-c.254) in his Commentary and two Homilies on the Song of Songs. Interest in Origen's exegesis of the Song's narrative elements has dominated past scholarship, which has almost entirely ignored how Origen assesses the Song itself, in its unity as a revealed text. This study aims to show that the Commentary and Homilies - when read in light of Origen's hermeneutic, his nuptial theology, his understanding of the prophetic mediation of inspired texts, and his doctrine of last things - clearly portray the Song of Songs itself as the divine Bridegroom's perfect marriage-song. As such, it mediates Christ's eschatological presence, as the spirit' of Scripture, in and through the intelligible structures of the text itself.

This is the first English translation of Marius Victorinus' commentary on Galatians. Analytical notes, full bibliography, and a lengthy introduction make this book a valuable resource for the study of the first Latin commentator on Paul. No such comparable work exists in English; and this volume engages fully with German, French, and Italian scholarship on Victorinus' commentaries. A number of themes receive special treatment in a lengthy introduction: the relation of Victorinus' exegetical efforts to the trinitarian debates; the iconography of the apostle Paul in mid-fourth-century Rome; Victorinus' exegetical methodology; his intentions as a commentator; and the question of his influence on later Latin commentators (Ambrosiaster and Augustine).

The catacombs of Rome have captured imaginations for centuries. This innovative study takes a fresh look at these underground spaces, and considers how art, space, texts, and practices can tell us more about the catacombs and the people who dug and decorated them.

How were the Johannine books of the New Testament received by second-century Christians and accorded scriptural status? Charles E. Hill offers a fresh and detailed examination of this question. He dismantles the long-held theory that the Fourth Gospel was generally avoided or resisted by orthodox Christians, while being treasured by various dissenting groups, throughout most of the second century. Integrating a wide range of literary and non-literary sources, this book demonstrates the failure of several old stereotypes about the Johannine literature. It also collects the full evidence for the second-century Church's conception of these writings as a group: the Johannine books cannot be isolated from each other but must be recognized as a corpus.

An English translation from Greek of Justin Martyr's two major apologetic works, which are recognized as a formative influence on the development of Christian theology in the early church.

First published in 1919, From Tradition to Gospel introduced and established Form Criticism in New Testament scholarship, and it remains the classic description of the field. Dibelius outlines the twofold object of Form Criticism, firstly to explain the origin of the tradition about Jesus, and secondly to uncover with what objective the earliest Churches learnt, recounted and passed on the stories and sayings of Jesus, which gradually developed into the Gospel narratives. In doing so, he begins to answer questions as to the nature and trustworthiness of our knowledge of Jesus. As new sources come to light and new critical techniques are developed, the original investigation into the Gospels along Form-Critical lines is as relevant as ever.

Christianity in the late antique world was not imposed but embraced, and the laity were not passive members of their religion but had a central role in its creation. This volume explores the role of the laity in Gaul, bringing together the fields of history, archaeology and theology. First, this book follows the ways in which clergy and monks tried to shape and manufacture lay religious experience. They had themselves constructed the category of 'the laity', which served as a negative counterpart to their self-definition. Lay religious experience was thus shaped in part by this need to create difference between categories. The book then focuses on how the laity experienced their religion, how they interpreted it and how their decisions shaped the nature of the Church and of their faith. This part of the study pays careful attention to the diversity of the laity in this period, their religious environments, ritual engagement, behaviours, knowledge and beliefs. The first volume to examine laity in this period in Gaul - a key region for thinking about the transition from Roman rule to post-Roman society - The Religious Worlds of the Laity in Late Antique Gaul fills an important gap in current literature.

Sortilege-the making of decisions by casting lots-was widely practiced in the Mediterranean world during the period known as late antiquity, between the third and eighth centuries CE. In My Lots are in Thy Hands: Sortilege and its Practitioners in Late Antiquity, AnneMarie Luijendijk and William Klingshirn have collected fourteen essays that examine late antique lot divination, especially but not exclusively through texts preserved in Greek, Latin, Coptic, and Syriac. Employing the overlapping perspectives of religious studies, classics, anthropology, economics, and history, contributors study a variety of topics, including the hermeneutics and operations of divinatory texts, the importance of diviners and their instruments, and the place of faith and doubt in the search for hidden order in a seemingly random world.

Like the other Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles - stories of the exploits of the key figures of early Christianity - The Acts of Peter provides a window into the processes of oral and written composition that shaped early Christian narrative. The text most probably did not achieve the form of an extended written narrative until the mid-second century, undergoing repeated oral and written reformulation. In this book Thomas looks at the sources and subsequent versions of the Acts and argues that 'transmissional fluidity' - the existence of the work in several versions or multiforms - is a characteristic the Acts share with many related works, from the Jewish novels of Esther and Daniel to the Greek romance about Alexander the Great and the Christian Gospels of Jesus. The fluidity of these narratives, says Thomas, allowed them to accommodate the changing historical circumstances of their audiences.

The first part of Nicaea and its Legacy offers a narrative of the fourth-century trinitarian controversy. It does not assume that the controversy begins with Arius, but with tensions among existing theological strategies. Lewis Ayres argues that, just as we cannot speak of one `Arian' theology, so we cannot speak of one `Nicene' theology either, in 325 or in 381. The second part of the book offers an account of the theological practices and assumptions within which pro-Nicene theologians assumed their short formulae and creeds were to be understood. Ayres also argues that there is no fundamental division between eastern and western trinitarian theologies at the end of the fourth century. The last section of the book challenges modern post-Hegelian trinitarian theology to engage with Nicaea more deeply.

The emperor Constantine changed the world by making the Roman Empire Christian. Eusebius wrote his life and preserved his letters so that his policy would continue. This English translation is the first based on modern critical editions. Its Introduction and Commentary open up the many important issues the Life of Constantine raises.

The Egyptian Nonnus of Panopolis (5th century AD), author of both the 'pagan' Dionysiaca, the longest known poem from Antiquity (21,286 lines in 48 books, the same number of books as the Iliad and Odyssey combined), and a 'Christian' hexameter Paraphrase of St John's Gospel (3,660 lines in 21 books), is no doubt the most representative poet of Greek Late Antiquity. Brill's Companion to Nonnus of Panopolis provides a collection of 32 essays by a large international group of scholars, experts in the field of archaic, Hellenistic, Imperial, and Christian poetry, as well as scholars of late antique Egypt, Greek mythology and religion, who explore the various aspects of Nonnus' baroque poetry and its historical, religious and cultural background.

The Chronicle of Pseudo-Dionysius (or the Zuqnin Chronicle) is an important historiographical work dating from the end of the eighth century. The third part of the Chronicle, translated here, is based on the otherwise lost part of the Ecclesiastical History of John of Ephesus (d. ca.588), which relates events in the reigns of Zeno, Anastasius, Justin I and Justinian. The work is written from the point of view of a religious dissident, a Monophysite, whose personal experience as a persecuted monk in his native Mesopotamia, as well as his later life in Constantinople, make the History a most interesting and unusual source.

This book reassesses the impact of Aristotle's moral and political philosophy on medieval scholastic thought. It examines the relationship between the common good and the individual good, and between the authority of the Church and the authority of the temporal ruler. The result is a major reinterpretation of the emergence of a secular theory of the state in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.

The Gospel of Thomas is one of the most debated early Christian writings. Discovered as a Coptic translation in the Nag Hammadi Library, its date, message and relation to the canonical gospels have been the subject of much divisive argument. This book offers new perspectives on the gospel and demonstrates the various ways in which it sheds light on the ideological and social history of early Christianity.Expert scholars go to the heart of current issues in Thomasine studies, such as the role of oral and written traditions in the composition of the gospel, Thomas' relationship with the Gospel of John and with Gnostic and ascetic tendencies in early Christianity, the gospel's attitude to women followers of Jesus and to Jewish ritual practices.>

For most observers, the decades between the great crusading expeditions of the twelfth century saw little contact of note between the Holy Land and Western Europe. In fact, as the neighbouring Muslim powers exerted increasing pressure on the crusaders, the Christians mounted a sustained diplomatic effort to secure outside help. This original investigation reveals for the first time the range and scale of the struggle to preserve Christian control of the Holy Land.

This outstanding collection of essays honour a distinguished scholar best known for her work on late medieval economy, demography, and estate management, and on the monastic community at Westminster. The uniting theme is the imprint of the church, especially the monastic church, upon society at large. Contributions range from the eighth to sixteenth centuries, with an emphasis on the later middle ages, looking at urban religion, monastic education, and the role of religious communities in stimulating economic growth. Westminster Abbey figures prominently, alongside essays on the effects of the Dissolution on nunneries, the role of sanctuary in local communities, and on individuals such as Matthew Paris and Robert of Knaresborough whose lives reveal much about medieval England. In a worthy tribute to a great medievalist, the contributors show us a world where the influence of the cloister reached into almost every aspect of daily life.

The Doctrina Christiana (On the Teachings of Christianity) is one of Augustine's most important works. In particular, it spells out just how far Christians may use the legacy of their classical, pagan past. This is a completely new translation, accurate and stylish, with a brief introduction that takes into account recent studies. The book includes a freshly edited complete text.

This is the first comprehensive study of the history of Asia Minor in antiquity to be written for nearly fifty years and the first attempt to treat Anatolian history as a whole over the millennium from the time of Alexander the Great to tbe hey-day of the Byzantine Empire. This second volume examines the rise of Christianity: Anatolian religious beliefs and practices provides fertile ground where both Jewish and Christian communities set down early roots; by the mid third century AD much of Anatolia was Christian, and Christian beliefs and practices shaped Anatolian history in Late Antiquity as decisively as the conditions of imperial rule had done in the high Roman Empire. Two relationships dominated every aspect of Asia Minor's history: that of the people to the land, and that of men to the gods. An enormous quantity of information derived from written sources, archaeological remains, inscriptions and coins make it possible to explore these relationships at a level of detail which is hardly possible for anyother part of the ancient world. Both themes have a significance which reached far beyond the boundaries of Anatolia.